The US shale gas boom has resulted in a significant increase in natural gas production as well as a significant increase in the production of natural gas liquids. One of the main components of the natural gas liquids produced with natural gas is ethane. Ethane is most commonly used as petrochemical feedstock such as for the production of ethylene. Ethylene is a feedstock for many, many high volume chemical based products such as polyethylene and styrene plastics, among many others. However, there are no other sizable consumption markets for ethane. US ethane supplies currently exceed demand by about 300,000 barrels per day causing depressed prices for ethane and attracting considerable investment into new ethane to ethylene production facilities. Most supply/demand estimates indicate that ethane will remain in surplus for many years and these predictions take in to account the new ethane to ethylene conversion capacity being built. Therefore, new markets for ethane and new technologies for converting ethane to products that have large existing or substantially growing demand would be very attractive in light of the projected low prices for ethane for many years. One of the largest end use markets is liquid transportation fuel and a simple conversion technology to any transportation fuel could prove to be quite profitable.
So, with the expectation that ethane will be plentiful and cheap, old technologies are being reconsidered that use ethane as a feedstock. One old technology is the conversion of ethane to current fuel markets such as gasoline and/or diesel. However, while there are known chemical processes for converting ethane to gasoline and or diesel, it has yet to be put into commercial production. With excess ethane currently being produced, there is or will soon be a need to create commercially viable processes to convert ethane to liquid transportation fuels.